Refinements, additions, and un-breaking stuff: iOS 7.1 reviewed

As someone with an original iPhone 4 that held out due to performance concerns, does this make it worth updating to 7.x? I noticed it's not even included on the battery life comparisons, which I didn't take as a good sign...

7.1 is worth the upgrade so far, but the new shift key look and behavior is throwing me off. I can never feel certain whether it's on or off, especially when it insists on shifting for you (e.g. when creating new folders). But that said that's the only change I've seen so far that I'd seriously want rolled back.

I agree; the shift change threw me immediately. I like the appearance of the answer buttons, but I think it's detrimental to usability.

I've already had a lock-up of sorts, on the lock screen no less. When my phone was locked, I hit the home button and slid over "> Slide to unlock" and the screen shifted 1/4 inch and popped back. I had to go through a power-off/on cycle to get back into my phone. I really hope that isn't frequent...

I like the general direction here. I think its also good of Apple to experiment a bit, though the Phone app's caller preview screen got borked big time with the tiny picture in the corner. Not quite as sexy as the original iOS 7 screen. The other thing that bothers me is that the slide to unlock is not any easier to read. In fact, it's a bit harder I think. They fixed this for the shut-down screen and could have done something similar, if a bit more subdued so as not to interfere too much with the wallpaper. Of course this is all really moot since the entire screen is basically the mechanism for sliding to unlock. It would unify things a bit further though. Otherwise might as well just put a giant "<" on the left side of the screen indicating to "go this a'way!"

The biggest issue: Maybe I'm wrong and it's been implemented a different way, but I think Apple put a stop to the nested folders "hidden feature/bug/glitch" where you could double-tap the home button and quickly touch the folder you wanted to move into another folder. My current nested folders are all intact, but it seems I can't add to them anymore. I may have to play around with this some more, but it looks like it's been done away with.

Otherwise this update is massively better in most respects to iOS 7. It's kind of like Windows 7 was what Vista should have been…give or take a few design miscues in this case. I have no doubt Apple will get this right…it may take another point update or iOS 8, but I think it will happen. Apple's updates always tend to have some growing pains before the kinks get worked out. For now, I can definitely live with it.

One other point: Did anyone else notice that Apple has somewhat arbitrarily changed around which version of the battery indicator it uses in which apps? They have two versions, green and black&white (well, it's kind of three, since the b&w version can be inverted in some cases). Some apps that used to have green now have b&w. Some that used to have b&w now have green. Progress!

Biggest change for me is that they finally brought back the shuffle function for music genre. It was in the previous versions but was removed in 7.0 which bummed me out to no end because I listen to my music by genre. Not having shuffle available without drilling down to a specific album was a music killer for me. I got around it by making some playlists but it was easier before so I'm happy it's back.

I was really, REALLY hoping they'd fix the hideously broken Podcasts app. I'll test it specifically for this version, but nothing in the notes suggests that they've fixed anything major (including sorting/grouping issues, mark as played, screwing up sync status, etc.)

I didn't test that out because it's not part of the "core" OS, but yeah I got tired of Apple's Podcasts app back when it still looked like a tape recorder. :-)

My favorite iOS app for this is probably Downcast, which has a nice interface and iCloud syncing.

Does Downcast integrate with iTunes on the Mac?

The only reason I still muddle through with Apple's Podcast app is because I use an iPod when I work out, and it's still easier to keep in sync than if I switched completely over to something like Downcast. If there was something that would reach into iTunes on the Desktop to keep it in sync, then I could abandon Apple's terrible Podcast app altogether.

I was really, REALLY hoping they'd fix the hideously broken Podcasts app. I'll test it specifically for this version, but nothing in the notes suggests that they've fixed anything major (including sorting/grouping issues, mark as played, screwing up sync status, etc.)

Well, Podcasts is an app that is separate from iOS itself. I wouldn't expect an iOS 7.1 update to fix Podcast, any more than I'd expect it to fix Pages, or even OmniFocus.

The most broken part of Podcasts.app is the syncing. So I'd hoped that maybe the update might fix something in the sync API such that podcast syncing would work right... nope.

My thoughts also. The 7.1 update actually killed the Podcasts app for me (I posted about it in the Mac. Ach. forum). All my feeds disappeared after the update. Two hours later an update to the Podcasts app appeared, but that did not help restoring my feeds.

Just FYI, I didn't update to iOS 7.1 (jailbroken) and updating the Podcasts app removed all but one of my subscriptions. Something else is going on

Most of the changes made sense from a usability perspective, but then they removed contact photos from the caller ID when receiving a call? That sucks, and seems to directly contradict the other usability changes.

But 32-bit and 64-bit devices running the final build of iOS 7.1 and any of the later betas have been remarkably stable. Whatever it was that was causing newer iPhones and iPads to crash and reboot, Apple seems to have straightened it out in the last six months.

Lies. Safari remains an unstable POS on the iPad Air. All it takes is 5-30 minutes with four or so tabs. You already mentioned what causes it, it's the increased RAM requirements. iPad Air is broken by design and likely unfixable unless they make Safari run in 32bits. Buyers beware!

But 32-bit and 64-bit devices running the final build of iOS 7.1 and any of the later betas have been remarkably stable. Whatever it was that was causing newer iPhones and iPads to crash and reboot, Apple seems to have straightened it out in the last six months.

Lies. Safari remains an unstable POS on the iPad Air. All it takes is 5-30 minutes with four or so tabs. You already mentioned what causes it, it's the increased RAM requirements. iPad Air is broken by design and likely unfixable unless they make Safari run in 32bits. Buyers beware!

It could be the particular websites you're looking at that's causing the crashes.

I'm not understanding the battery life difference between the 5 and the 5S. In the Ars original review of the 5S, also by Andrew Cunningham, it says that battery life is virtually identical and I believe other reviewers generally agreed. The test in this review shows a 100 minutes better life in the 5S for WiFi browsing or about 25% better.

But 32-bit and 64-bit devices running the final build of iOS 7.1 and any of the later betas have been remarkably stable. Whatever it was that was causing newer iPhones and iPads to crash and reboot, Apple seems to have straightened it out in the last six months.

Lies. Safari remains an unstable POS on the iPad Air. All it takes is 5-30 minutes with four or so tabs. You already mentioned what causes it, it's the increased RAM requirements. iPad Air is broken by design and likely unfixable unless they make Safari run in 32bits. Buyers beware!

It could be the particular websites you're looking at that's causing the crashes.

It could, but it would still be Apple's fault. A website shouldn't be able to crash a browser, no matter what. And anyway, I'm not observing any specific pattern. The last crash was with Androidauthority.com. Before that is was Engadget. It's rather random..

Seriously, the bugs with the Lyrics view are so apparently, so readily obvious to anyone who has their songs tagged with any kind of lyrics, that they should not have even made it into 7.0, let alone 7.1.

If you don't know what I mean, populate your songs with lyrics (I recommend Get Lyrical) Then listen to one, tap the screen to show lyrics, then watch what happens when:

1) You skip forward to the next song 2) You naturally let the track finish

In both scenarios, the lyrics will NOT update to reflect the new song. They'll just stay on the original song forever until you tap to dismiss lyrics, then tap to bring them back. To see lyrics you literally have to tap the screen twice with each new song.

It pisses me off to no end. Well, back to the Apple Feedback page. AGAIN.

Seriously, the bugs with the Lyrics view are so apparently, so readily obvious to anyone who has their songs tagged with any kind of lyrics, that they should not have even made it into 7.0, let alone 7.1.

If you don't know what I mean, populate your songs with lyrics (I recommend Get Lyrical) Then listen to one, tap the screen to show lyrics, then watch what happens when:

1) You skip forward to the next song 2) You naturally let the track finish

In both scenarios, the lyrics will NOT update to reflect the new song. They'll just stay on the original song forever until you tap to dismiss lyrics, then tap to bring them back. To see lyrics you literally have to tap the screen twice with each new song.

It pisses me off to no end. Well, back to the Apple Feedback page. AGAIN.

While I understand your complaint, do realize that what you are describing is not a bug, it is a difference in how you want the app to function. If I opened up the lyrics to a song, I would be pretty irritated if it just decided to change which lyrics were showing just because the song changed.

Seriously, the bugs with the Lyrics view are so apparently, so readily obvious to anyone who has their songs tagged with any kind of lyrics, that they should not have even made it into 7.0, let alone 7.1.

If you don't know what I mean, populate your songs with lyrics (I recommend Get Lyrical) Then listen to one, tap the screen to show lyrics, then watch what happens when:

1) You skip forward to the next song 2) You naturally let the track finish

In both scenarios, the lyrics will NOT update to reflect the new song. They'll just stay on the original song forever until you tap to dismiss lyrics, then tap to bring them back. To see lyrics you literally have to tap the screen twice with each new song.

It pisses me off to no end. Well, back to the Apple Feedback page. AGAIN.

While I understand your complaint, do realize that what you are describing is not a bug, it is a difference in how you want the app to function. If I opened up the lyrics to a song, I would be pretty irritated if it just decided to change which lyrics were showing just because the song changed.

Two of the biggest issues I (and a lot of others) have have not been addressed.1. Siri is god awful slow. I still don't understand why it was architected this way. Why, when I want to call someone in my address book does that command need to be sent to apple's servers? I have good to great LTE speed here. It shouldn't take the phone 5 to 10 seconds to dial a number in my contacts. Generally speaking I find Siri to be of little use in it's current crude form when it seems like it could be great.2. TouchID. I, and a lot of others suffer from fingerprint rot in TouchID. After reprogramming the thing in various ways 4 times I have given up, but it's definitely a software issue, not a hardware issue.

Note that I'm very much on the Apple team. We use Macs, and iOS devices exclusively and I'm just pointing out some negatives. I just don't understand why they can't get this stuff right. I will avoid discussing iCloud, and the horrible iTunes software, to keep things light.

I just asked Siri to call "home" and the phone rang in a matter of seconds (like 2-3). How quickly do you want the process to work?

Two of the biggest issues I (and a lot of others) have have not been addressed.1. Siri is god awful slow. I still don't understand why it was architected this way. Why, when I want to call someone in my address book does that command need to be sent to apple's servers? I have good to great LTE speed here. It shouldn't take the phone 5 to 10 seconds to dial a number in my contacts. Generally speaking I find Siri to be of little use in it's current crude form when it seems like it could be great.2. TouchID. I, and a lot of others suffer from fingerprint rot in TouchID. After reprogramming the thing in various ways 4 times I have given up, but it's definitely a software issue, not a hardware issue.

Note that I'm very much on the Apple team. We use Macs, and iOS devices exclusively and I'm just pointing out some negatives. I just don't understand why they can't get this stuff right. I will avoid discussing iCloud, and the horrible iTunes software, to keep things light.

Have you tried TouchID after the update? Mine is working so much better than before and I didn't rescan my fingerprints. The difference is like night and day in how much better it works now.

While I understand your complaint, do realize that what you are describing is not a bug, it is a difference in how you want the app to function. If I opened up the lyrics to a song, I would be pretty irritated if it just decided to change which lyrics were showing just because the song changed.

I would buy this argument, but in *every* version of iOS I've used before 7.x, the functionality of the lyrics is how I described.

That means from at least iOS 4.x through 6.x, the lyrics behaved how you'd EXPECT lyrics to behave if you're listening to a song: That it changes. With the song. This is the "It Just Works" functionality I'd expect from Apple and what I was getting until iOS 7.0.

So I'll call it a bug. Music in 7.x still has some serious deficiencies, I'm betting this was not by design.

I may have missed it being mentioned but in conjunction with the 6.1 update to AppleTV, iDevices will now find AppleTVs for airplay over bluetooth. Still needs to be on the same network, but no longer on the same subnet/vlan, it takes care of the various bonjour issues.

While I understand your complaint, do realize that what you are describing is not a bug, it is a difference in how you want the app to function. If I opened up the lyrics to a song, I would be pretty irritated if it just decided to change which lyrics were showing just because the song changed.

I would buy this argument, but in *every* version of iOS I've used before 7.x, the functionality of the lyrics is how I described.

That means from at least iOS 4.x through 6.x, the lyrics behaved how you'd EXPECT lyrics to behave if you're listening to a song: That it changes. With the song. This is the "It Just Works" functionality I'd expect from Apple and what I was getting until iOS 7.0.

So I'll call it a bug. Music in 7.x still has some serious deficiencies, I'm betting this was not by design.

With how many things changed in particular from 6 to 7, that's how it worked before is about as weak of an argument as you can get. Did you check the option snii posted? If the option is set correctly, it is a bug. If it isn't, then they just changed the default to something different then what you wanted, which is not a bug. I honestly don't know though because I don't have a iPhone anymore to test with.

The music app is still awful, even broken, compared to iOS 6. It's really a pain in the ass to use.

In what sense is it "broken?"

Its broken in the sense that it makes me not want to use it, ever. It's embarrasingly bad that on an apple device, the company that literally invented mp3 players, i have use an alternative to the built in music application.

But two specific annoyances are

1. There is no way to play a single album. If you try to play an album, once it reaches the last track it just keeps going on to the next album by that artist. Sometime it also just chooses a songs at random to play. (i never keep my app set to shuffle)

2. If i tilt my phone even the slightest angle it immediately switches to the cover flow view and stays like that forever. Like I have to go out and buy a new phone.

Sorry if it's been asked in an earlier post since I'm too lazy to go through all of them. Have you tested the improvements made to Touch ID?

I usually didn't have any problem with it, but sometimes it wouldn't recognize my fingers, usually left thumb, five times in a row that I had to type the long password.

I've only used it some times today, and it seems it's working better. It missed my left thumb a couple of times, but usually made it the second time. I may be lucky, but I want to know whether they made some concrete improvements to it.

While I understand your complaint, do realize that what you are describing is not a bug, it is a difference in how you want the app to function. If I opened up the lyrics to a song, I would be pretty irritated if it just decided to change which lyrics were showing just because the song changed.

I would buy this argument, but in *every* version of iOS I've used before 7.x, the functionality of the lyrics is how I described.

That means from at least iOS 4.x through 6.x, the lyrics behaved how you'd EXPECT lyrics to behave if you're listening to a song: That it changes. With the song. This is the "It Just Works" functionality I'd expect from Apple and what I was getting until iOS 7.0.

So I'll call it a bug. Music in 7.x still has some serious deficiencies, I'm betting this was not by design.

With how many things changed in particular from 6 to 7, that's how it worked before is about as weak of an argument as you can get. Did you check the option snii posted? If the option is set correctly, it is a bug. If it isn't, then they just changed the default to something different then what you wanted, which is not a bug. I honestly don't know though because I don't have a iPhone anymore to test with.

Sorry if it's been asked in an earlier post since I'm too lazy to go through all of them. Have you tested the improvements made to Touch ID?

I usually didn't have any problem with it, but sometimes it wouldn't recognize my fingers, usually left thumb, five times in a row that I had to type the long password.

I've only used it some times today, and it seems it's working better. It missed my left thumb a couple of times, but usually made it the second time. I may be lucky, but I want to know whether they made some concrete improvements to it.

7.1 made a huge difference for me. It's working much better now than it was before.

While I understand your complaint, do realize that what you are describing is not a bug, it is a difference in how you want the app to function. If I opened up the lyrics to a song, I would be pretty irritated if it just decided to change which lyrics were showing just because the song changed.

I would buy this argument, but in *every* version of iOS I've used before 7.x, the functionality of the lyrics is how I described.

That means from at least iOS 4.x through 6.x, the lyrics behaved how you'd EXPECT lyrics to behave if you're listening to a song: That it changes. With the song. This is the "It Just Works" functionality I'd expect from Apple and what I was getting until iOS 7.0.

So I'll call it a bug. Music in 7.x still has some serious deficiencies, I'm betting this was not by design.

With how many things changed in particular from 6 to 7, that's how it worked before is about as weak of an argument as you can get. Did you check the option snii posted? If the option is set correctly, it is a bug. If it isn't, then they just changed the default to something different then what you wanted, which is not a bug. I honestly don't know though because I don't have a iPhone anymore to test with.

It wasn't a real option that snii posted. He was suggesting a hypothetically useful option for Apple to add.

While I understand your complaint, do realize that what you are describing is not a bug, it is a difference in how you want the app to function. If I opened up the lyrics to a song, I would be pretty irritated if it just decided to change which lyrics were showing just because the song changed.

I would buy this argument, but in *every* version of iOS I've used before 7.x, the functionality of the lyrics is how I described.

That means from at least iOS 4.x through 6.x, the lyrics behaved how you'd EXPECT lyrics to behave if you're listening to a song: That it changes. With the song. This is the "It Just Works" functionality I'd expect from Apple and what I was getting until iOS 7.0.

So I'll call it a bug. Music in 7.x still has some serious deficiencies, I'm betting this was not by design.

With how many things changed in particular from 6 to 7, that's how it worked before is about as weak of an argument as you can get. Did you check the option snii posted? If the option is set correctly, it is a bug. If it isn't, then they just changed the default to something different then what you wanted, which is not a bug. I honestly don't know though because I don't have a iPhone anymore to test with.

The music app is still awful, even broken, compared to iOS 6. It's really a pain in the ass to use.

In what sense is it "broken?"

Its broken in the sense that it makes me not want to use it, ever. It's embarrasingly bad that on an apple device, the company that literally invented mp3 players, i have use an alternative to the built in music application.

But two specific annoyances are

1. There is no way to play a single album. If you try to play an album, once it reaches the last track it just keeps going on to the next album by that artist. Sometime it also just chooses a songs at random to play. (i never keep my app set to shuffle)

2. If i tilt my phone even the slightest angle it immediately switches to the cover flow view and stays like that forever. Like I have to go out and buy a new phone.

With how many things changed in particular from 6 to 7, that's how it worked before is about as weak of an argument as you can get. Did you check the option snii posted? If the option is set correctly, it is a bug. If it isn't, then they just changed the default to something different then what you wanted, which is not a bug. I honestly don't know though because I don't have a iPhone anymore to test with.

That was just an made-up example of a Setting that could be put in place if Apple wanted. There is no such option in the Music settings. Alas.

I really don't mean this in a condescending way, I really don't, but: you're someone without an iPhone, and thus you're not familiar with the weird little quirks and deficiencies introduced by the iOS7 music app as-is. You even spoke about viewing lyrics from a hypothetical point of view. I've been doing it daily since my 2008 iPod Touch.

Anyhow, I left Apple my 2 cents about the questionable Lyrics implementation, and also about the missing full-screen picture on the calling screens. Those are my only 2 beefs with iOS7.1.. Everything else is awesome.

And to others: Yes, TouchID detection is noticeably improved. It is also significantly faster at unlocking when I use my most common finger + regular angle. It's like it better learned my most 'regular' fingerprint signature.

1. There is no way to play a single album. If you try to play an album, once it reaches the last track it just keeps going on to the next album by that artist. Sometime it also just chooses a songs at random to play. (i never keep my app set to shuffle)

You're playing an album from the "Artists" view, so it is continuing to play more songs by the artist you chose. If you play albums from the "Albums" view you don't get that behavior. "Albums" is under the "More" section (at the bottom).

IMHO, this is the correct behavior. If I go into the "Beatles" section and start the first song, then it should play through all the Beatles songs, not just the first album.